Not

After the last blog of plenty now a blog of want. Obviouysly inspired by Heinrich Hoffmann’s Suppen-Kaspar, whose diminishing boy-figure I’ve never forgotten, the dress was crocheted from a finely spun silk/wool-mixture, using a thin crocheting hook. Lots and lots of tiny even stitches. As with all my dresses I worked from the centre: down from the narrow waist for the skirt and up for the bodice. I loved the feel of the blue skirt flowing slowly from between my fingers. The bodice was a sweatier affair, wielding a very small crocheting hook to produce extremely tight stitches. I wanted a dense, firm and contracted feel here and chose the pattern to give the impression of bricks used to erect a tower, all in contrast to the softness of the wide flowing skirt. I had chosen another pattern originally and when I changed my mind about it half way through I found it was impossible to unravel the stitches as they were completely interwebbed. Had to cut everything off just above the skirt and start again. That bit of necessary aggression seemed strangely fitting.
The dress hangs from a mattress needle. It is gigantic, 25 cm long, and looks and feels like a needle made for a giantess. I imagine her sitting on top of a hill with legs stretching into the valley and mending her daughter's torn dress with dainty stitches (in giant’s terms). I’m digressing, but in a way it makes sense, as the dress is also something to do with how much place one wants/dares to take up in the world. Of course it’s always more ambiguous than that – by trying to make yourself small and almost disappear in thin air you also stand out. Delicacy set against and with stressed, strained toughness.
With each dress I crochet I fantasise a girl. I see this one as having come to a stage where she refuses to take anything in. Not food, not air, not filth, not hair, not insult, not injury, not fear, not hope, not affection, not

Dimensions: 61 cm x 90 cm